February 20, 2011: Eating The Seed Corn, No Mandate, On the Altar of Greed

Paul Krugman writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled “Eat the Future” correctly pointed out that the Republicans in congress have no mandate to cut spending or reduce the deficit. Citing a survey by the Pew Research Center he pointed out that when Americans were asked they favored “more, not less, spending on most things, including education and Medicare. They’re evenly divided about spending on aid to the unemployed and–surprise–defense”. (1) In fact, says Klugman, the only thing they really want to cut is foreign aid.

When asked how the states should go about dealing with growing deficits, Americans favored neither cutting “education or health care” nor “do they favor tax increases”. “The moral is clear”, said Krugman, “Republicans don’t have a mandate to cut spending; they have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic”. Fitting, it seems to me, for a party that has declared war on science and reason.

When they aren’t engaging in political theatre, as in the recent vote by the house to repeal the Health Care Reform Act, or in trying to strip state employees of the right to bargain collectively, they are voting to deny the Environmental Protection Agency the power to issue regulations on global warming gasses. Is it any wonder, given this record of hopelessly whoring after a political base, that is itself lost in a parallel universe that answers to an entirely different and opposite set of physical laws, that we should find them when in opposition proposing budgets with no numbers; and, when in the majority, crying against deficits whilst voting to give the rich yet another free ride.

This business has been going on for a long time. Ever since Reagan proposed what George the Elder called “Voodoo Economics” in which it was held we could slash taxes, raise defense spending and balance the budget. Later George the Lesser, following the same well-tread path did much the same thing calling Al Gore’s criticisms of this approach “fuzzy math”. It wasn’t “fuzzy math”. It wasn’t the Democrats who can’t cipher, it’s the party of the political pachyderm, the holy warriors who, in the cause of greed, wage a constant war with empiracle reality.

For decades, now, the Cons have been telling the electorate that all we have to do is cut waste, fraud and abuse from the budget and we can bring it into balance; that we can, in effect, have our cake and eat it too. This, coupled with the canard that we can enact massive tax cuts for the rich and that the largesse so bestowed upon our benefactors will “trickle down” to the rest of us, has combined to put us into a fiscal bind that portends very ill for the future.

“Which brings me back to the Republican Dilemma”, writes Krugman. Having promised to cut 100 billion from the federal budget and leaving defense and, for the time being, Medicare out of the mix, the House GOP now faces cutting appropriations for “pregnant mothers, infants and young children, ...578 million from IRS enforcement" (there’s a boon for the rich if I ever saw one, sure to lower future revenues creating larger deficits)..."648 million from nuclear nonproliferation enforcement", cuts in Pell Grants, Home Heating Assistance, High Speed Internet and Rail, Public Transportation and...yes, Big Bird over at PBS.

“In a better world”, says Krugman, “politicians would talk to voters as if they were adults. They would explain that discretionary spending has little to do with the long-run imbalance between spending and revenues. They would have to explain that solving that long term problem requires two main things: reigning in health-care costs and, realistically, increasing taxes to pay for the programs Americans really want”.

That’s not going to happen of course. By whoring after the political fringe–even to the extent of welcoming the John Bircher’s back into the fold–they have boxed themselves into a corner whereby they are now held hostage by the very forces they thought they could manipulate. To suggest serious Health Care Reform would incite a revolt within the ranks–just ask Mitt Romney who has been running as fast as he can from his record in Massachusetts. To suggest raising taxes–any taxes–would invite endless primary challenges. Already the idiot fringe has targeted such persons of reason as Richard Lugar of Indiana and Senator Olympia Snowe of Main. Even such a water-carrier and hopeless apologist like Orrin Hatch of Utah–one of the great supporters of Clarence Thomas–is on their hit list.

The fact is this is the very box the Rescumlicans would have us in, and by agreeing to extend the Bush Tax Cuts the administration bought into the strategem. Because we have created a political environment where we cannot reason with the unreasonable we can now have no compromise. Taxes are off the table, that means that the tax breaks given to those who need it least are going to be paid for by taking milk from babies, making our work force more illiterate and less competitive, and allowing our infrastructure to further deteriorate.

In order to make it possible for old moneybags to give little lord Fauntleroy even greater advantages in life we are now, it appears, willing to eat the seed corn of next year’s crops. We are sacrificing the future on the altar of greed and we cannot now appeal to the electorate as grown adults for the “Generation of Swine”, long since lost in a parallel universe of eternal adolescence, has never grown up.


Footnotes

1. Krugman, Paul. “Eat The Future”. New York Times, Monday February 14, 2011.
Pg. A23

February 14, 2011: False Alarms, The Politics of Fear, Stampeding the Great Unwashed

Much has been made by the likes of Ron Paul and his followers in the “Tea-bagger” movement about how the level of our national debt is fast approaching 100% of the annual gross domestic product. This is represented as some kind of ceiling beyond which we cannot go, complete with various doomsday scenarios worthy of revelation.

As the above graph suggests, we have carried high levels of debt relative to the annual gross domestic product several times in our collective history without suffering the kind of doomsday collapse these modern prophets suggest. In fact you will notice that at the end of World War II we accumulated a level of debt equal to about 125% of our GDP or the amount equal to the entire yearly economic output of the country. No one suggested in 1946, as we set about through profligate fornication creating the generation of swine, that we were facing imminent collapse. In fact, judging from the birth rate, the national response was quite the opposite. Debt, in and of itself, even high levels of debt, have no bearing on the state of the national well being.

What differentiates then from now are three salient points. The first is not demonstrated on this graph. In 1946 we owed this debt to ourselves. Today three quarters of the debt is financed from abroad, so interest payment are, in effect, monetary transfers out of the country. The second point is demonstrated by the graph. Close examination reveals a number of interesting points: we emerged from the Revolutionary war with a debt level of about 35% of GDP, high by historical standards. Notice the up-tick in 1860 as we financed the Civil War. Likewise the two world wars of the twentieth century. Notice also how we lowered our debt burden in times of peace–that is until the emergence of Ronald Reagan. Look at the graph from 1980 onward: here you can see the interruption of the upward slope by the Clinton Administration followed by a return to growing deficits. The third point is this: what did we get for all that debt in the last 30 years?
Previously we established our independence and our own economy, we bound up the nation’s wounds, we fought for a new international order bringing in its wake decades of peace and prosperity. The massive debt of the last three decades has produced no such results. Instead we find that our two greatest exports are jobs and capital. I say this by way of pointing out that it is not debt that is at issue here. It is what we are doing with it or, more precisely, what we are not doing with it.


I point this out because one needs to get some perspective on this problem in order to speak reasonably, if not rationally, on the subject. The howlers on the idiot wrong raise this issue so as to create a climate of fear as we approach yet another debt ceiling in which the Congress will have to vote to borrow additional moneys. In order to whipsaw from granting the filthy rich yet another huge tax break, to now cutting 100 billion from domestic spending, paring such programs as Head Start, Pell Grants, and the Home Heating subsidies for the poor, it is necessary to sound yet another false alarm much as Ol Two-Cows would do at the Homeland Security Department in the run up to the 2004 election.

Once again the conservatives resort to the politics of fear in an effort to stampede the great unwashed into gutting the very programs upon which they depend and prevent us from rebuilding our infrastructure and, by so doing, our national economy. It is palpable nonsense.

Footnotes:

The graph depicting the percentage of debt relative to the GDP can be found at:
www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_debt_chart.html

GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product. This measurement, formerly called GNP for Gross National Product, is the sum (measured in dollars) of the total amount of goods and services produced by the national economy annually.

February 12, 2011: Reagan As Reactionary, Perils of Pure Ideology, A Burden On the System

To say that Reagan was a reactionary is not to dismiss the impact of his political career on western civilization. Indeed the impact was quite extraordinary, for he had picked up where Goldwater began giving impetus to a movement that in it’s most recent manifestations has become more virulent and destructive than ever. As Wilentz (1) points out, the warping of the conservative movement in the wake of Reagan has served to further politicize the judiciary and the justice department; further undermine constitutional safeguards against intrusive government; has further developed the bastard idea–hatched at the Yale Law School–of the “unitary executive” arrogating powers unto the presidency heretofore unheard of; it has further crippled governance through a war on federal regulations, spending cuts on regulatory agencies, and general incompetence; and, perhaps most importantly, it has further eroded the foundations of the republic itself by waging war on the middle class.

It is a war now in its fifth decade. Today incomes remain stagnant or are declining. Official unemployment now hovers around 10%, with estimates of real unemployment ranging from 15-18%. Home foreclosures, down 17% from last year at this time, were lower only because of the paper jamb in the foreclosure mills due to some irregularities in the banking industry. There are some further troubling signs: it was announced briefly on NPR yesterday that the New York Stock Exchange is to be merged with some German outfit foreshadowing the movement of the center of the financial world elsewhere. It was also announced that papers released through Wikileaks reveal that Saudi oil production may have peaked or is about to. Further, also decades before it was about to happen, Social Security outlays will exceed the contributions to the Social Security Trust Fund in this fiscal year.

All of this can be laid at the foot of Reagan and his Republican cohorts. Failure to reign in on the housing market as the real estate bubble began developing in the early part of the last decade is a singular example. Here confronted with the fact that from 2003-2007 the economy was annually building 25% more housing units than for which there existed a market, the administration–always finding regulations and controls abhorrent–failed to act. Greenspan, at the Federal Reserve, acting as the acolyte of Ayn Rand that he is, had full faith that the “markets would correct themselves”. The result, given western man’s long history with such bubbles was wholly predictable. Nevertheless the ideological imperative–always measured against the Reagan “legacy” of pure ideology–won out.
So we had another crash.

Today, nearly 4 years into it, the end of mass foreclosures are nowhere in sight.

Then there is the example Reagan set by removing the solar panels from the White House roof, and beginning the movement to undo Carter’s efforts to cut our use of foreign oil. Carter had cut our imports of oil by 50% in 4 years, a trend that was speedily reversed under Reagan as thermostats were reset, speed limits were raised, CAFÉ guidelines for the auto industry were relaxed and abandoned, and subsidies for alternative energy were cut.

Similarly the lingering unemployment rate. In my youth unemployment as a so-called “lagging indicator” would follow the movement of the economy by about six months. Today we are well into the first year of recovery and no end of high unemployment in sight. Why? Because, among other things, capital is now sitting on an estimated 2 trillion dollars and refusing to hire anyone. What expansion is occurring is taking place overseas.

The reason that we have this skewing of the economic balloon is that at the beginning of this administration a robust jobs bill was sacrificed to the conservative “mantra” of cutting taxes. Almost two thirds of the nearly trillion dollar outlay went to tax cuts with business getting the lions share. Cuts for median incomes would amount to about a pizza a week. Instead of building things...like roads, rails, and internet we parceled it out in such a way as to have minimum impact on employment. The result is that we are further behind technologically and, for all that TARP money, we have nothing to show for it except the return of fat-cat bonuses on Wall Street.

By failing to take the money and put it into construction, we failed to increase demands for building products and labor necessary to rebuild America. The result has been an extraordinarily high unemployment rate for an extraordinarily long period of time. This serves to reduce revenues while increasing demand for services creating huge deficits. It also means less money going into Social Security and the wholesale retirement of aging “boomers” who–much against their proclivity and far too soon–are leaving the workforce and becoming a burden on the system.

And, of course, lets not forget that it was ‘Ol’ Two-Cows Bush who, following the Gipper’s example, famously raided the Social Security Lock Box and drained the accounts of every last dollar leaving only a stack of IOU’s reaching nearly to the moon. Oh how much different it would have been had not the Supreme Court elected that fool from Texas back in 2000. Social Security would have been rock solid and the entire federal debt would have been erased from the books.


Footnotes:

Wilentz, Sean. “The Age of Reagan, A History, 1974-2008" Harper Collins, New
York, 2008. 564 pages.

February 7, 2011: One For The Gipper, More Lucky than Good, Legacy as Psychosis

“It was not a revolution but a reaction”—on the Presidency of Ronald Reagan
                   —From “The quotations of Chairman Joe”


Yesterday ended a week-long series of remembrance, marking what would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Wilson Reagan, USA Today featured a banner headline “Reagan Revolution” with a large picture of our 40th president on the front page.

It was not a revolution. It was a reaction.

What the festivities demonstrated more than anything else is the selective memory or, if you will, the selective amnesia that pervades this country; as if the 8 long years of his administration had made it, as depicted in a bit of 1984 campaign propaganda, truly “morning in America”. Such a reading, as with all things conservative, simply cannot withstand the harsh scrutiny of the historical record.

The historical record that belies the political career of Ronald Reagan began, of course in California. Upon election as Governor he promised a 10% across the board tax cut (sound familiar) but responding to pressing reality quickly reduced it to 6 per cent.

“Even with these ‘economies;” wrote Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page in their seminal “An American Melodrama The Presidential Campaign of 1968", there is no way to stop the cost of running California from going up. Too many people arrive every day to overload the state’s already tautly stretched services. In the summer of 1967, Reagan found himself obliged to ask the legislature for a billion-dollar tax increase
to finance a record five-billion-plus budget.” (1) A bit more than a year in office Reagan would set a pattern that he would follow throughout his public life: after initially reducing taxes he would then pivot 180 degrees and begin a long series of tax increases to repair the damage. Taxes that, unfortunately, would be not progressive but regressive in nature; that is, taxes that would fall disproportionately on the middle classes.

This pattern would be repeated. Upon assuming the Presidency in 1981 he quickly passed a series of tax cuts, cutting the marginal rates on the wealthiest Americans from 72% down to 35, then, briefly, down to 29%. What followed was long series of tax increases–11 such increases during Reagan’s own terms, followed by the famous tax increase under “Pappy” Bush (for which Bush was to pay a steep political price), and another under Clinton before the damage to the federal budget could be undone. The damage to the country, leading as it did to the acceleration of the concentrations of wealth and the hollowing out of the middle class, has yet to be rectified.

Secondly, his apologists also fail to own up to the fact that neither the size of the federal government nor the level of federal spending went down under Reagan. The record demonstrates, as does his earlier record as Governor of California precisely the opposite. It would take Jerry Brown in California and Bill Clinton in Washington (both Democrats) to reign in on the growth of government largesse.

Third, Reagan’s legacy in foreign affairs bears little resemblance to the historical record. In fact any such similarities between how he is now remembered and the actual events that occurred are pure coincidence. Today he is seen by his apologists as a Sabre-rattling warrior who stood up to our adversaries. The events in Lebanon, Nicaragua, San Salvador, demonstrate otherwise. Sure he took on such military powers as Granada, but his record as an actor in foreign policy is spotty at best. The famous rapproachment with the old Soviet Union is a case in point. Beginning his presidency with strident warnings of the “evil empire” and adopting a hard-line approach he was brought, by the end of his administration to precisely the opposite positions of “trust but verify”. What brought this about was not the military build-up causing the Soviet Union to collapse under the strain of maintaining the arms race, rather it was the internal collapse of the Soviet economy which was occurring in any case. Reagan simply happened to have the good fortune of presiding at the time of the collapse. In fact this scenario was predicted as early as the late 1940's by the diplomat George Kennan who as deputy Ambassador to the Soviet Union under Averill Harriman, outlined precisely this outcome as he put forward what would become America’s “Containment” policy: the blueprint for our Cold War strategy.(2) Citing Fred Chernoff in an article in “International Affairs 67" (1991) Sean Wilentz in his book “The Age of Reagan” said that “reliable estimates show that the Soviet Union’s annual rate of increase in procurements [for the military] fell from an average of 7.02 percent between 1977 and 1982 to 5.94 percent over the next two years. The change appears to have begun in 1980. The figures contradict some of Reagan’s assertions at the time–and they contradict the arguments that Reagan’s buildup won the cold war by damaging the soviet economy” Indeed Wilentz concludes that the decline of Soviet arms spending and the state of the Soviet economy began before the Reagan rearmament programs or the construction of SDI otherwise known as “star wars”. (3)

In fact, it could more reasonably be argued, the decline of the Soviet economy and the unraveling of the Soviet Empire began under Jimmy Carter.

Reagan, as always, was more lucky than good. It wasn’t his particular posture that brought the results but were the consequences of a generation-long foreign policy begun under Truman and followed by every succeeding administration, plus–as Kennan predicted so presciently decades earlier–the Soviet Union’s own internal contradictions.
Reagan was there to pick up the pieces. Clearly seeing what his advisor’s did not –that the Soviet Union was now, for economic reasons, desperate to negotiate–Reagan found himself opposite an adversary in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev who was more realist than ideologue.

This leads us, by degrees, to the fourth consideration of the Reagan Legacy: his ideological purity. Years before he became President, not yet 2 years into his governorship of California, the British journalists Chester, Hodgson and Page, had this to say about Ronald Reagan:

To see Reagan as the “Crown Prince of Goldwaterism” is to “see Reagan as something other than he is. He is a public-relations man, not a policy maker. Many actors feel the need to break out of role-playing and take possession of the action, but Reagan apparently felt no such yearning in his long acting career. He was not director material. Nor is he a politician. His is willingly at the mercy of experts and interests backing him. He can sell the policy, but he cannot make it. If taxes have to be raised, he will raise them and make it look as palatable as possible by blaming his predecessors’ “spendthrift” policies, just as easily as he can promise in a campaign to trim government action to the bone.” (4)

“The total phenomenon is a recognizable one. In Reagan’s mind there is no contradiction between his personal sense of righteousness, his antiquated small-town philosophy, and his response to the pressures of the moment. It would not strike him as essentially bizarre that he should turn down a request to inspect the state’s mental institutions more closely while making himself available for out-of-state fundraising jamborees. So he cannot be explained as a primitive, or a cynic, or a smart aleck. He is less sinister, but much more dangerous, than any of these. What resolves the contradictions is the realization that Reagan is totally devoid of any concept of objective morality. In short, he has no imagination. And so, to ask whether Reagan is good or bad is, in a sense, an irrelevant question. He is a force–whether for good or ill depending entirely on which direction he is pointed in and who is at the controls.” (5)


This was the assessment of three British reporters covering the presidential election of 1968, a contest in which Reagan, albeit briefly, was a candidate. Analyzing the ‘actors’ in the great American Melodrama, these men viewing American politics from the outside and, perhaps, more objectively were able to tellingly apprise the strengths and the weaknesses of what was later to become the Reagan Era.

Reagan went into politics, in large part, to cut his own personal taxes. Beyond that, as the analysis here suggests, there was not much of a political compass. A former New Deal Democrat turned Republican because of his tax bracket, he could easily adopt any role. On becoming Governor of the State of California in 1967, a reporter asked him what kind of governor he would make. “ I don’t know”, replied the affable actor, “I’ve never played the part of governor before”.


“He is a force–whether for good or ill depending entirely on which direction he is pointed and who is at the controls.”

Under the influence of Bud McFarlane, Oliver North, Donald Regan and several emerging Neocons like Elliot Abrams and Jean Kilpatrick, Reagan–taking the hard line could rattle the sabres. He could, following the lead of McFarlane, North, Regan and Abrams and over the objections of Secretary of State Schultz and Secretary of Defense Weinberger, begin a straight arms for hostages deal with the Iranians and in the process divert the proceeds to illegally funnel money to a terrorist organization in an effort to destabilize the elected government of Nicaragua. The “Iran-Contra” affair would nearly topple his presidency, saved from impeachment by a Democratic Congress that had no stomach for another impeachment proceeding and, in any case, did not want to elevate George W. Bush to the presidency. Once again, Reagan was more lucky than good.

Writing of the political climate of 1968, the three British reporters made a salient observation. “All nations have their myths”, they wrote, “and there is some merit in them as the bond of unity and the spur to effort. The danger, for a nation as for an individual, comes when the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes too wide. In an individual, such a gap between self-perception and reality is known as psychosis. A nation that indulges in too much self-glorifying rhetoric while unable to win a small war or to prevent the deterioration of its social fabric is unlikely to be able to heal its real distempers”.(6)

If anything, the Reagan Legacy presenting as it did the face of ideological purity, limited government, lower taxes, a strong posture on national defense, a belief in small-town family values and a “strict construction” of the constitution did little to heal the emerging American psychosis. In fact it materially contributed to it enlarging what in 1968 was then called the “credibility gap”. For in practice Reagan’s policies, represented in large measure, the exact opposite. This served only to greatly increase the alienation and cynicism of the citizenry, adding to the National Psychosis, so clearly evident in the emerging “Reagan Legacy” and greatly increasing paranoia as that ‘legacy’ fades in the light of stark reality. A paranoia for which America was already widely famous.

The fact is that Ronald Reagan was not a revolutionary, he was a reactionary. It was the difference between the ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric posing as a populist movement in defense of main street America, and his reactionary ‘corporatist’ actions which favored Wall street and savaged Main Street, that made the beleaguered middle class feel as though it were under assault. It is in response to this assault–so greatly accelerated by the Reagan administration–that the middle class feels so persecuted, so alienated, so angry. It is through the misleading of the country that Ronald Reagan materially contributed to the psychosis that today finds expression in the nonsense on the idiot right, further dividing the country, creating in its wake paranoia and political paralysis.

At his worst, when he was led by the counsel of the emerging Neo-cons, he would produce a legacy of law-breaking, coverup, and scandal. At his best, when he recognized the changes that were occurring in the Soviet Union and began serious arms reduction negotiations, he was led in that direction by his wife Nancy who had moved to replace the ideologues in the White House with more sane, more moderate men. Fortunately, for the aging actor, it was just in time to save his embattled presidency.

What kind of President would Ronald Reagan be? That was the question following the election of 1980. The answer would depend on who would, at any given time, be writing the script.


Footnotes:


1. Chester, Lewis, Hodgson, Godfrey, and Page, Bruce. “An American Melodrama, The Presidential Campaign of 1968". The Viking Press, New York. Page 195


2. Wilentz, Sean “The Age of Reagan, A History 1974-2008" Harper Collins
New York, 2008. Pp245-287


3. Wilentz, page 247

4. Chester, et.al. Page 195
5. Chester, et.al., Pp.196-97

6. Chester, et.al., page 44

January 25, 2011: Dictatorship of Corporate America, Truth and Power, No One Left

The Dictatorship of Capital. It sounds strange to our ears in this land of liberty, but it shouldn’t. We have a long history of censorship in this country going back to the very earliest days of the Republic. During the administration of our second president, John Adams, the congress passed the Alien and Sedition acts which, among other things, made it illegal to speak badly of the president or the government. During the civil war a United States Congressman, Clement Vallandingham of Ohio if memory serves, was seized and transported into confederate territory for his opposition to the war. The Palmer Raids in the wake of World War I and the McCarthy era at the beginning of the Cold War, in which such performers as the “Weavers” were banned from Television and actors like Lloyd Bridges were blackballed. Then came Vietnam which saw the cancellation of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” because of their pointed political commentaries in opposition to the war. When performers and, at times, regular citizens have spoken truth to power the consequences have all too often been unpleasant.

It comes as little surprise, then, to see the strongest voice of progressive criticism on the airways silenced. While his audience was growing, and he paved the way for others—Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell to follow, Keith Olbermann was fast becoming a bur under the saddle to Corporate interests. Lets be clear about this, here was not a demonstrated case of government but corporate censorship. As with the cases of Bridges, the Smothers Brothers, Ed Asner and others, this was not the first such action by Corporate America to reign in free speech; nor will it be the last.

I have not been understood: It is not government dictatorship that we need fear. It is corporate dictatorship. Lest it appear that this be a bit of hyperbole, a bit over the top, let’s review a few facts.

First we spend more money in this country on private security than on the public police. This has been true for some time now. I’ve run across the truth of this statement not only by reading the works of Robert Reich but also having worked in the security industry where they speak with pride about society placing greater value upon the Pinkerton’s than the police. The Pinkerton’s, incidentally, don’t have to read you your rights upon arrest, nor give you access to an attorney.

Secondly, the intrusiveness of corporate America monitoring your every financial transaction, your every physical move is astounding. Imagine the demonstrations in the streets if the government were to so monitor you. Yes the government does more monitoring of its citizens than it has any right or need, but it pales in comparison to the “big brother” that is Corporate America. As a case in point: I once new a person who sat on a jury in an arson trial. The defendant was confronted with all kinds of financial records. Was he late on some utility bills? Of course. Was he late on some credit card payments. Of Course. You draw the verdict. If confronted with a phalanx of corporate attorney’s you can depend on the records of whatever you do—and records are kept on everything—being dragged out to demonstrate this or that motive. Further, Corporate America has installed video cameras in every parking lot, every apartment complex, every hallway, every sidewalk, every supermarket and department store. Capital monitors your every move. In the wake of the citizens united case Capital now buys your every election. As noted above Capital censors what you see and hear.

Thirdly, with the exception of a few rare appearances by labor leaders and environmentalists on the old MSNBC—that is on Maddow and Schultz during the Olbermann era—when was the last time they appeared on national television or radio? In my youth when Lawrence Spivak hosted NB C’s “Meet the Press” one would see labor leaders like Walter Reuther and George Meany, at least once a month. So it was on all the other network interview programs. One also saw environmentalists, peace activists, civil rights leaders. In short, under the “fairness doctrine” voice was given to alternate points of view. A reflection of the “counterveiling power” to use professor Galbraith’s terminology that existed to balance the power of Corporate America. Beginning with the Reagan years, Corporate America began to confuse itself with the genuine article to the point now where it dominates—indeed nearly monopolizes—everything. One’s own personal space: look at that logo you have emblazoned on your shirt. Look at all that advertising that comes into your home. The workplace: where are your unions? Who protects you now from capricious and arbitrary behavior? The public forums: When was the last time you saw the President of the AFL-CIO on the air. Do you even know who he is much less what he represents?

Olbermann, although strident, was hardly a radical. Here was no socialist. Here was no firebrand. He functioned primarily as a voice of reason and sanity calling out the idiot wrong for all its misrepresentations and outright lies. News, on “Countdown” was covered by way of picking up on how the Wrong-Wing was covering it—Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and famously O”Reilly, and setting the record straight. It was universally seen as an exhausting work for there are over 450 such howlers out there and it takes herculean effort to shovel so much shit. But for all the nonsense that has been said about the so-called “Liberal” press since the Nixon era, wherein lies truth to the charge? Has there been a call to reinstate progressive taxation? Has there been a call to reinstate the tax code of Jerry Ford much less Dwight Eisenhower? Has there been a call to vigorously enforce anti-trust law? No. Corporate America would never tolerate it. It could not tolerate even Olbermann who proposed no such thing. Olbermann’s crime was to simply demand some honesty in the debate, but Corporate America would have none of it. The media now, such as it is, is fast becoming a house of mirrors fashioned by capital to worship its own reflection.

With the shouting down of political discourse at “town hall meetings” by the brown-shirt tactics of corporate shills representing themselves as modern minutemen, with corporate America increasingly assuming the police powers of the state, with the print and electronic media in the hands of a very few corporate giants we are left to ponder “who speaks for us now”. Increasingly, we stand alone now before our corporate paymasters, just like on the shop floor. Separate but equal? It’s beginning to look a lot like Jim Crow to me, with no one left to call them out.

January 22, 2011: The Dictatorship of Capital, Paradise Lost, Silence of the Lambs

“Where once we feared the dictatorship of the Proletariat; we now embrace the dictatorship of Capital.”

From the “Quotations of Chairman Joe”

My brother, who in an earlier incarnation was a regional Vice-President of the Machinists Union will tell you, if you ask, “the truth is that capitalism doesn’t work, communism doesn’t work, what works is a combination”, in a word a hybrid or what used be called a “mixed” economy.

In high school my old government teacher instructed us that what made America great was that we refused to adopt ideologies. The concept of “isms” are foreign to us. The litmus test, as it was then applied, was not whether an action was ideologically correct or pure, right or wrong but whether or not it worked. To that end we in the United States, as in the liberal democratic states of Western Europe, went about constructing in the twentieth century democratic societies with decidedly hybrid or “Mixed” economies. This arrangement combined a free market economy with a vigorous regimen of corporate regulation, anti-trust actions, graduated income taxes worthy of the name, and a host of state-sponsored entitlement programs. Known generally as the “Welfare State”, in Gunnar Myrdal’s terminology, the new order provided a more level playing field, a more healthy distribution of wealth, a better education for nearly all citizens and a so-called “safety net” for those who fell through the cracks. Meeting the demanding standard of “does it work?” the greatest generation came home from war and built a social order that brought peace and economic progress to every class of Americans—including the wealthiest Americans.


The emerging consensus wrought by the New Deal gave us, a robust and growing middle class. Prosperity in the form of the “boom” years of the early 50’s and the 60’s was a near universally shared experience with all classes benefiting by the improvements in economic production and therefore wealth.

The great unraveling began with the emergence of Barry Goldwater in 1964 spawning in his wake a cadre of determined disciples who would, in ensuing years, labor in the political vineyards and the conservative stink tanks to launch a determined assault on paradise. After nearly 40 years of Republican and Republican-lite we are left with a situation wherein we begin to resemble to classic Banana Republic, where even our national elections are monitored by international agencies.

Just a few salient facts: Today the middle class commands less of the national wealth than before 1929. Six of our largest banks control 66% of the economy. The top ten percent controls 60% of the national wealth; conversely, the bottom 50% controls a mere 1%.
With organized labor representing a mere 12% of the workforce, a fraction of the laboring class less now than before the Wagner Act was passed in the 1930’s the scales have been heavily tipped in favor of Capital. To many of us who have watched with dismay the developments of recent decades our fears have not been unfounded. With the Supreme Court decision last years in the Citizens United Case, in which the Court, overturning long established legal precedent, held that Corporations and Unions can spend unlimited amounts of money, the specter of near corporate monopoly of political discourse becomes palpable. It did not take long to confirm our worst suspicions as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, soliciting tens of millions of dollars in foreign contributions, spent heavily to engineer a right-wing take-over of the United States Congress. Karl Rove’s political action committee raised millions from a handful of fat-cats. Similarly the Tea Party shenanigans were funded by a relative handful of billionaires funneling money through Dick Army’s political action committee.

As the unions decline in relative strength, the tepid efforts of those on the so-called “progressive” side of the argument pale by comparison and will, in all likelihood, fall far behind. It’s not because we on this side of the aisle don’t have right on our side, its that we don’t have near the money. Soon nothing will be left but the echo chamber fashioned by capital to worship its own reflection

On that note yesterday Keith Olbermann left MSNBC and his “Countdown” program is no more. Olbermann had built the program into a serious challenge to Fox Noise, leading MSNBC past CNN to second place in the cable news business. Evidently this is not a market decision but a political one taken by the corporate paymasters. The press release said that it was a mutual parting of ways, but the network had all too quickly announced its new programming line-up. Sources close to the scene say that he was almost fired last fall for contributing to three democratic campaigns and that one of MSNBC’s executives who had protected Olbermann was leaving. Both departures, it appears to this commentator, have everything to do with the pending purchase of NBC by Comcast, who evidently have no interest in a “countervailing power”. “Let us silence this bleating of the sheep” said the corporate paymasters. Corporate America has, once again, spoken. Capital has Dictated.

Welcome to the Dictatorship of Capital.

January 12, 2011: Rhetoric and Reality, The Politics of Envy vs. The Politics of Greed, Pricilla Goodbody.

“It is not the rhetoric that creates the conflict, but the conflict that gives voice to the rhetoric”

From “The quotations of Chairman Joe”


Late last August, on the Capitol Mall, telebuffoon Glenn Beck of Fox Noise held a rally at the Lincoln monument. Originally billed as a political event, then as an attempt to “take back the civil rights movement” it morphed into a quasi-religious affair in which the great howler toned down his rhetoric and delivered a much less menacing message than is customarily the case on his daily talk shows.

In response comedians Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert held a much larger and less partisan rally at the same place in early October hoping to restore ‘sanity’ to political discourse. Stewart made reference to the vitriolic and divisive political speech that has taken control demanding that we return to some modicum of civilized discourse. It was a bold and perhaps pointless exercise.

Three years ago CSPAN televised a forum at the University of Oklahoma featuring, among others, the likes of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, Former Senator John Danforth of Missouri, Gary Hart and former Sam Nunn of Georgia. The topic was political discourse with the general consensus being that partisan politics have poisoned the well making it difficult to govern in the United States.

In the wake of Stewart’s criticisms, Keith Olbermann modified his Worst Persons segment on his “Countdown” program to read “not really Worst Persons”. But equating MSNBC with Fox Noise appears, on closer inspection, almost laughable. Bill Mahr, asked to comment pointed out the false equivalence. “Look,” he said “Olbermann at least deals with facts, there is an objective reality. Beck, on the other hand, is just short of playing in his own poop”. Nevertheless the point stands. Much of the tone of this column is in reaction to the idiot wrong and the vitriolic nonsense constantly coming from the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter and company. As with Olbermann, some of us have taken to the internet, or in his case the cable channels, to give the cons and the neo-cons a bit of their own medicine. To do otherwise would be unilateral disarmament and only succeed in confirming—by lack of response—the public view that those on the left are simply wimps.

But let’s be clear about this. The rhetoric, such as it is now, is a product of the right-wing smear machine and the left’s reaction to it. As an old friend of mine used to say “if you want to kill the rats, you have to crawl down in the sewer”.

Well that’s not completely accurate. In fact the stridency and the vitriol are mere reflections of the suffering of the middle and working classes as they grapple with the death grip that the controlling interests in this country have over the economy. The cries of agony are met with even more strident condemnations from the economic royalists about class warfare and the politics of envy. Cast between the bookends of the politics of envy vs. the politics of greed lies the great chasm left by the ever embattled middle class.

Let’s be clear about this: the political divisions within this country are not the result of the political vitriol coursing through the veins of American politics. Rather it is precisely the opposite. The vitriol that presently permeates the internet, the airwaves, cable news and opinion is merely an expression of the deep divisions within this country. More precisely it is a direct result of the destruction of the relative power—economic and, therefore, political—of the middle class. If speech has become rough it is because Johnny Carson’s “Miss Priscilla Goodbody” –the mythical librarian censor at NBC—has been fired due to corporate restructuring. That is, the middle class is no longer strong enough to act as a referee; it no longer has the economic and—therefore—the political power to reign in on the extremes. As a case in point: simply suggest in an open forum the return of the ‘fairness doctrine’ to broadcast and internet content and see what happens.

Last Saturday morning at a strip mall in Tuscon Arizona, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot along with 19 others while holding an open-air town hall meeting with her constituents. Many, including MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Joe Scarborough have warned that the heated rhetoric falling on troubled minds would result in such tragedy. Clearly, if the town-hall demonstrations of 2009 are any indication, the ability to excite beyond reason a segment of the population that is clearly unstable will lead—given the availability of weapons in this country—to precisely these outcomes. It is a tragedy we have witnessed all too often, and the middle class, unable to reign in the excesses of even the National Rifle Association, is now powerless to stop it.

Jon Stewart may have been trying to function as the fictional “Miss Pricilla Goodbody” but he doesn’t have near as much control.

January 11, 2011: A House Divided, The Center Gives Way, From Transcendence to Triangulation

“War on the middle class is war on the republic itself”

---The Quotations of Chairman Joe


The term “Banana Republic” became part of our political lexicon in the twentieth century. It has quite a specific meaning. The nomenclature emerged from several and repeated failed experiments in representative government originating in Latin America where the United States, in an effort to gain legitimacy for its hemispheric hegemony, engaged in repeated attempts to impose its form of government on its neighbors to the South. The result, with rare exceptions, was throughout the last century largely disappointing. There were furtive attempts at establishing Republican forms of government throughout central and South America usually ending in the overthrow of these governments by indigenous forces or, as in the case of Haiti, Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, the Dominican Republic, at the instigation of the United States itself. What became clear, from these experiments in social engineering, was that the establishment of representative government in countries with severe maldistributions of wealth proved to be problematic. A pattern began to emerge. The landless and impoverished masses given the vote would in due course elect an assembly that would move to redistribute wealth. The moneyed interests, screaming communist plot, would then call out the military and, either on their own or painting the populist movements as pawns of the “international communist conspiracy”, excite the ever virulent strain of paranoia that lurks just beneath the surface in the United States to enlist American aid and gain legitimacy for the ensuing repression. Let’s be clear about this. In Nicaragua the entire country was but a plantation for the Samoza family. In Venezuela the top 10% owned nearly 90% of the country. Other countries, like Mexico, presented a democratic tradition in which the PRI, which took power with the revolution in 1910, held sway for over 80 years. Many of the noble experiments quickly degenerated into one-party rule or outright dictatorships. Again what would happen is that the people would gain voice through the various parliaments and would move to redistribute land and/or wealth. Wealth would first seek to buy back power and, failing to effect a favorable outcome, call out the military bringing a swift end to the “democratic” experiment. In those countries wherein the military proved insufficient or reticent to crush its own people, the elites would then turn to the United States to destabilize, help overthrow, or simply send in the marines. Here in this political Petri dish the conditions necessary for the establishment of stable representative government came fully into relief. These experiments in making the entire hemisphere over in our own image demonstrated a political principle our forefathers understood: that representative government can only be established in a society wherein there is an equitable distribution of wealth. If the gulf between the have’s and have not’s is too wide the foundations of the republic will not hold. As Lincoln would say in a different context nearly a century later “a house divided against itself cannot stand”.

What distinguishes us from the classic Banana Republic is that advanced democratic societies are characterized by a large, vibrant and controlling middle class. This is no accident. It is necessary for the Middle Class to be strong enough to counter the weight of the extremes of poverty and wealth whose interests stand diametrically opposite one another. If wealth is concentrated in too few hands then it will simply buy power, as is becoming more evident in each election cycle. If the poor begin to outnumber the Middle Class and society becomes bifurcated into two camps—the wealthy few and the impoverished many—then the democratic experiment is bound to fail as in the classic example of the Banana Republic wherein wealth wins; or the French Revolution where wealth loses. Without a strong and pervasive middle class to act as a referee, to stand as a “middle ground” for which the polar opposites must compete, then there is no “buffer” there is no compromise.

Benjamin Franklin, so the legend goes, was stopped on the street as deliberations ended on the new Constitution. A woman walked up to him and asked, “what kind of government have we, Mr. Franklin?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it”, replied the old inventor.

If we can keep it…the founders knew this was an historical experiment. They knew their creation was a fragile one and many did not expect the republic to outlive them. As Arthur Schlesinger points out in his “Age of Jackson” many not only distrusted the Eastern Mercantile interests but understood from their reading of history that a true republic must be born of a large and controlling class of middling station. So in the 19th Century Jefferson’s yeoman farmer became the Bulwark of the Republic so to speak.

Lets be clear about this. The middle class is not a product of great wealth, it is not something handed down to us from above as a manifestation of philanthropy or even enlightened self-interest. The middle class has always been the creation of political will. The idea that the wealthy will, out of some exaggerated sense of “noblesse Oblige” or out of their own economic interests, create and defend a social middle class is laughable on it’s face. Nothing in the history of man demonstrates this. In fact the moneyed interests have forever been found kicking and screaming and standing foursquare against everything from banning child labor, unionization, the eight-hour work day, the forty hour work week, the minimum wage, social security, health care, civil rights (read about the “anti-abolition riots” in New York City in the 1830’s and the business community’s support of the rioters) environmental and consumer protections, to name but a few articles of reactionary litany.

Let’s get back to this: the middle class is a product of political will. If the last three decades demonstrate anything it is that with the reduction of taxes and the growing share of the national economic pie taken by the wealthiest Americans almost none of that money has found it’s way into the middle class. In fact, left to their own proclivities, the wealthy have done what they always do…pocket the money. In the last decade they have commandeered two thirds of the tax cuts and fully three quarters of the wealth produced by the increases in worker productivity. Nothing is “trickling down” to the next social rung as evidenced by the stagnation of incomes, and the absolute decline in purchasing power of those of ‘middling means”.

The middle class in America was and is a creation of political will. Whether it was through the outright rejection of the attempt to transplant European aristocracy to the new world during the colonial period, the expansion westward as a way of insuring the survival of the yeoman farmer, the institution of income and estate taxes early in the last century, the breaking up of trusts and other economic combinations, the passing of education, and home mortgage programs in the postwar era, to laws making it easier for workers to organize (until Reagan that is), to minimum wage, unemployment and worker’s compensation insurance, to Medicare and Medicaid these were political acts taken by the people’s representatives assembled. As a case in point: before the passage of Social Security being old was almost synonymous with being poor. In fact as late as the early 1960’s over 30 percent of the elderly lived in poverty. With the passage of Medicare and Medicaid and other such programs that level has been reduced to nearly 10%.
The passage of this legislation and the institution of these programs not only served to create a ‘fairer’ distribution of wealth but served the more important function of shoring up the modern American Middle Class and, by extension, the foundation of the republic itself.

I have not been understood. The middle class is itself a creation of political will designed to give stability to the republic. Without a middle class, in a representative society, one has contention, strife, war, revolution or repression. Only an all-powerful middle can insure against the extremes and for that reason war on the middle class is war on the republic itself.

In November last year, the center gave way. The ship of state was ripped loose of it’s moorings and cast to sea piloted by a ship of fools. Losing over 60 seats in the house to the modern “No-Nothing” party, the Speaker’s gavel was handed over to John Boner of Ohio who, upon taking the dais, announced that the first act of the new Congress will be the repeal of the Health Care law. Obama, with the opposition in control of committees, investigations and spending, will now be forced to do what Clinton had done, become the buffer between his own party and the newly re-emergent troglodytes. “Triangulation” it was called then; a strategy of positioning the President in the middle in which he becomes not an advocate of his agenda but an architect of a series of miserable compromises. The promise of ‘transcendence’ becomes the reality of ‘triangulation’. The last time we found ourselves in this position, we witnessed so-called ‘welfare reform’, trade agreements that savaged manufacturing jobs, cuts in social spending, the further dismantling of New Deal banking regulations, and the continued decline of the share of national wealth controlled by the Middle Class. If recent history is any example, it means the resumption of the war on the middle class and, by extension, the Republic itself.

December 24, 2010: Meteoric Perils, Strawmen, A new Jim Crow?

In politics there are perils attending meteoric rise. It’s one thing, if one is a Warren Harding or a Rutherford B. Hayes or a Millard Fillmore to be plucked from near absolute obscurity and seemingly overnight ensconced upon the throne. These men, after all, planned to do nearly nothing in office once they grasped the scepter of power, and fully expected to return to nearly absolute and well-deserved obscurity. These men were destined to take their places as mere questions in the historical game of ‘trivial pursuit’. But for those with an overarching vision of the office, or those unlucky enough to reside in the White House during troublesome years, to govern without the determined support of the attending political coalition is nearly impossible.

The problem with the election of 2008 was that for differing reasons the Republican nominee came to the table with equally suspect support. Having spent nearly two decades in the Senate as the Senator of K street, the conservative stalwarts of the party, as their Democratic liberals on the other side of the isle, would search in vain for any demonstrations of support not to mention the championing of any issues of consequence. Obama because of his all-to-brief presence on the national political stage and McCain, with the possible exception of campaign finance reform—anathema to Conservative ideologues and Capitalists alike—his only contributions involved burnishing his so-called ‘bi-partisan’ credentials. The term “Maverick” meant not strong conservative leadership to most Republicans, but his predilection to dance with the Democrats instead of the one who brought him to the party to begin with. Clearly, whoever took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 2009 would have major elements of his own party looking over his shoulder watching, suspiciously, his every move.

There were further complications. The first involved race. I remember during the campaign a conversation I had with a co-worker concerning the nature of Obama’s liberalism. Whatever his liberal leanings, I intoned, Obama once elected could not be seen as champion of a massive jobs bill or the raiser of new taxes. He would be charged not only with the usual nonsense about leading a ‘class war’, but would also been seen by a significant part of the electorate—perhaps a majority—of effecting reparations for America’s sin of slavery. There is ample precedent for this. Because of the alleged abuses of the Reconstruction Era after the Civil war, for instance, many white Southerners see any economic or social initiatives through the dark lens of race. And, in fact, it wasn’t long before the likes of Limbaugh and Beck were raising precisely this issue as the administration struggled to pass the stimulus package. No, I told my friend Robert, lacking the latitude brought by long acquaintance and hemmed in by the everlasting issues of Race in America, this would be no New Deal. Obama would prove not to be a ‘socialist’, or even a liberal but would instead govern from the center. As he gathered about him the remnants of the old guard I felt the air go out of the balloon that was the inflated rhetoric of “change we can believe in” to meet “the urgent necessity of now”.

This was further exasperated by the Senate leadership who, seeing in the young man from Illinois the next presidential contender, worked to keep the young Jedi from association with any legislation that could in any way be seen as ‘controversial’. Arriving late to the dance and prevented from showcasing any leadership on behalf of any of the constituent elements within the party, Obama emerged as a broadly appealing alternative to the mess in Washington but with no record of having waded in to clean it up. It was left to rhetoric, not deeds, to define this candidacy.

When reaching the point where patience runs out my father would say “don’t tell me what you’re going to do, show me what you’ve done”. Talk is cheap he was saying in his own inimical way. It is one’s actions that define, in the last analysis, who one is and what one is about. By heeding the counsel of the party leadership and avoiding the trenches he could appear to be ‘above the fray’ and speak eloquently of ‘transcending’ the divisions of our nation’s capitol but such a stratagem did nothing to define who he is.

When emerging on the national political stage it is incumbent on the party’s nominee to stand before the assembled and claim a political tradition. Who are you? that is the lingering question answerable by words and deeds. By words in that the newly anointed speaks of the long political tradition that is his party and what it stands for, highlighting through the emphasis of this or that part of the historical record where in the spectrum he stands. Likewise his or her actions: Has he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the unions in their fight for a living wage? Has he fought rescumlican efforts to gut the 40 hour work week? Has he stood with the environmentalists? Through word and deed each party assesses its candidate. In terms of direction is he a Teddy Roosevelt or a Chester Arthur; is he an FDR or a James Buchanan. Judging administrative ability is he a Dwight Eisenhower or a Richard Nixon; is he an FDR or a Jimmy Carter. Simply put does he represent reform or is he a stalwart, and underlying is the question of whether he is competent enough for it to matter anyway. These were the lingering questions facing the voters in 2008 and the answers from either camp were not forthcoming.

We were left grasping at straws; for both candidates were, in effect, straw men whose substance, such as they were, were well hidden beneath layers of Madison Avenue imaging countered by the misrepresentations and outright smears attendant every political campaign. And into the breach the rescumlicans moved to fill the void by hurling as much shit as they could in an effort to besmirch the young Jedi. First there was the Reverend Wright Broo-ha-ha. Then the attempt to brand him a Muslim and all that implies in post 9/11 America. Then after the election a full-fledged assault labeling him by degrees a socialist, a fascist, a Stalin, a Hitler. Finally, when all else failed they would question his very legitimacy to the office claiming that he was a foreign born citizen of Kenya, and so the midwife Orly Taitz gave birth to what became known as the “Birthers”. A few months later they would complete the bookend by introducing the concept of “ObamaCare” “Death Panels” creating a so-called “Deathers” movement. The purpose of this organized and well-heeled campaign was to not only smear the otherwise pristine image of the new president but in so doing attribute a “foreignness” and, therefore, sinister “un-American” quality to his administration. In other words, to de-legitimize this presidency. Cries to “take our country back” arose giving voice the full-throated fear of howling citizens made more menacing in that he is our first African American president. Back from whom one might ask. Given the nearly lily-white nature of the aging boomers that swelled the “Tea-bagger” movement the answer is as menacing as it is obvious. Take it back from the carpet-baggers and scalawags who have hijacked our government for the purpose, presumably, of introducing a new era of Jim Crow.

December 23, 2010: The Gathering Storm, Go It Alone, Relative Assurance

There were two problems concerning the 2008 election cycle. The first is that unlike 1932 the impending economic collapse was, through swift action, averted. Hardship, when it came, was much more divisive, falling upon the working poor and only part of the middle class. The upper classes suffered only momentary reversals soon ameliorated by the application of the salve of Federal largesse. So too with the upper middle class, which was barely inconvenienced. But the middle class and lower middle class continued to suffer the pummeling, as had the working poor, of the last four decades. The result was that unlike 1932, the new Administration came to power with not nearly the congressional majorities and, in the Senate, a majority hanging on the uncertain votes of Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln. The second was that the political process produced in both candidates for the presidency men who, for vastly different reasons, did not possess the political capital with which to deal with these problems.

Inauguration day proved to be a bright and sunny gala event, but there were ominous signs about for anyone with eyes to see. At the congressional lunch that afternoon, Senators Kennedy and Byrd were taken from the gathering, both suffering from failing health, and about the new president stood not the reincarnation of the New Dealers but the very architects of this miserable crisis.

In 1999 after 13 presidential vetoes, the Clinton Administration, at the urging of Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and his underling Tim Geithner, signed off on a Republican backed repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Passed during the Depression the Glass-Steagall Act prohibited Banks and lending institutions from investing in the stock market. The purpose of the act was to prevent a crash on Wall Street from threatening the financial institutions of this country. For sixty years the United States had experienced the usual ups and downs of the business cycle, had its stock market bubbles, its boom times and its financial hardships. But for sixty years we had no financial crisis; economic downturns and recessions to be sure, but we had no financial crises portending another Great Depression.

All that began to change as the “Boomers” came to adulthood and began the long and determined process of getting their hands about the throat of the economic goose that lays the golden egg; that is the systematic dismantling of the New Deal. Among the first casualties, during the Nixon years, was the removal of the requirement that one must hold stock for a given period of time—45 days as I remember it—under severe penalty. This provision worked to take the ‘volatility’ out of the market and reduce speculation and, by extension, speculative bubbles. By the time the Clintons came to power the old New Deal safeguards had been largely dismantled in favor of the Republican Market fetish with only Glass-Steagall remaining as the main bulwark of protections. Having learned nothing from the Savings and Loan Crises and scandal in the wake of the Reagan years, the new ‘centrist’ Democrats completed the coup de grace by finally ridding Wall Street of the last impediment to grand larceny. And so with the banks and the insurance and the financial houses merging, with the mixing of stocks with savings, banking and real estate, and the movement of investment capital into the ever more esoteric instruments of derivatives, credit-default swaps, and hedge funds, the economic order became ever more exploitive; and, with an ever greater portion of the wealth landing in ever fewer hands, unstable. And so, by the time the Clintonites had handed power over to ‘Ol Two-Cows’, the conditions were ripe for the fleecing of the economy on a truly grand scale; and the creation, by way of the so-called “day traders” of economic instability the likes we haven’t seen since Herbert Hoover.

It took nearly 8 years for the ‘casino days’ to give way to another great economic calamity, but the Federal Reserve had learned enough from past experience, and the Republican minority had enough dog in the fight to move with some alacrity to meet the emerging crisis, at least while it was on their watch. Not so after power was handed back to the custodians of sound public policy. As inauguration day approached Republican support for sound economic policy--even the bail-out of their Wall Street benefactors—evaporated in the name of the true god of Republicanism: unlimited political expediency. It became clear, as he assumed the reins of power, that Obama would have to go it alone.
One forgets that on that cold March morning in 1933 when FDR stood on the capitol steps and declared that “we have nothing to fear, but fear itself” that not only had the crisis developed from a Wall Street collapse into a full-fledged world-wide Depression, and that after over three long years of suffering and an unemployment rate estimated at 25%, the voters had returned an electoral majority of three quarters of the House and two-thirds of the Senate. We also forget that FDR had been a national public figure for over a decade. History records in 1920 the sweeping victory of the son of Blooming Grove as Harding and Coolidge went about the business of repudiating Wilson’s “New Freedom” by putting the scions of Wall Street back in the saddle. What we don’t remember is that the Democratic candidate for Vice President was none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Subsequent to the electoral defeat the nation watched his life threatening battle with polio and his long recuperation, his rise to the governorship of New York, and his emergence as the leading contender for the 1932 presidential nomination. When he stood on the capital steps, the country had a general understanding of the man in which they had placed so much hope.

Likewise with Eisenhower who, as wartime commander, had given the nation long exposure to his leadership and its capabilities, emerging as a national figure in whom one could place great trust. The same could have been said about Lyndon Johnson who had served a long time in the congress and had emerged as a national political figure as Senate Majority Leader. Nixon, although less trustworthy, had established formidable foreign policy credentials and, given the realities of the Cold War, went a long way toward establishing political confidence. Likewise Gerry Ford who had been on the national political stage for over a decade as House Minority Leader before becoming, as a product of the Watergate Scandal, the consensus candidate to replace Nixon.

The great undoing began in 1968. The “Boomers” coming of age coincided with that tragic year of violence and assassination. Beginning with the disillusion brought by the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the protests and riots, the remnants of the disillusioned and the ‘New Left’ converged upon the Democratic National Convention creating a backlash so violent that the party determined to reform itself root and branch. Creating the McGovern Committee, George McGovern would transform the party rules governing the Presidential nominating process and in so doing vaulting himself, by 1972, to the party’s nomination. The process, when completed, would transform the Democratic Party opening it to women and minorities, and vastly increasing the number of primaries, taking the party’s nomination from the hands of a few political ‘king-makers’ like Chicago’s Richard J. Daley and placing it in the hands of ‘the people’. There were other, unintended, consequences. First by making the nomination a long primary battle. in which voter turn out is consistently low compared to the general election. the reforms greatly increased the power of single-issue groups. Secondly, by eliminating the ‘winner-take-all” nature of the primary results in each state in favor of proportional allocation of convention delegates, the reforms greatly increased the length of the campaign. Lastly the reforms, until the moneyed interests created new levers of control, created the opportunity for absolute unknowns to seize the nomination.

As early as 1972 the consequences of the party’s reforms became evident. Nominating a relative unknown Senator from South Dakota the party presented a convention that gave voice to every single issue group within the Democratic coalition. The result as McGovern himself was to ruefully observe years later, was that “I opened the doors and three million people ran out”. There were other consequences. Not only did the middle class forsake a party that was increasingly organizing itself around single-issue social issues instead of broad-based bread and butter issues, but placing the nomination in honorable but uncertain hands did nothing to instill confidence. The result was another convention circus and a Nixon Landslide.

The Democrats were handed the election, in spite of their reforms, by the criminal ineptitude that characterized the dark side of the Nixon personality. What emerged was a newly elected president who found himself, on inauguration day, at polar opposites of where FDR had stood a generation before: as an absolute unknown using the speech to begin the process of defining himself before the American people.

Who is this man? That is the lingering question every voter faces when making the lonely decision in the voting booth. It’s always a ‘pig-in-a-poke’ but only relatively so. There are times when the process gives us some assurances. But, increasingly, in recent years not. With Reagan we could be assured that we would be heading in the wrong direction. With Bush less so. But with the emergence of Clinton and Obama we have men achieve the presidency with no record of fighting and, on occasion, winning on behalf of the coalition that is the party. The result is that we invest our hopes and aspirations into a nearly absolute unknown. The new President emerges with support a mile long but an inch deep.

Let me put it another way. Of the great mischief that the “Boomers” have visited upon the republic nothing, except perhaps their fooling with the tax code, nearly compares with the rage for term limits. The great winners of term limits are the lobbyists, special interests, and the executive. Previously a newly elected member of the house or senate would go about spending his first years doing constituent services, voting to support broad-based economic and social programs, and bringing home the ‘bacon’ to his or her district. Over time, although a constituent would find fault with a vote here or there, the citizens would learn to trust his judgment. This would give a member of the legislature, and should that person become governor, the trust needed to have the political capital necessary to govern. So too in national politics. By watching Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Robert Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan emerge to national prominence the public could register approval or disapproval with relative assurance. The supporters of these men when, as when Reagan moved to raise taxes, could blame it on subalterns and demand “let Reagan be Reagan” knowing his heart if not his head. Not so with Carter, the Bushes, Clinton and now Obama.